The Jewish Ethicist: Quote Unquote

Must a supplier honor a discount offered by a rogue sales representative?

Q. Our study group obtained a very attractive price quote from a salesman on a set of Torah books. We told him we would try to collect the money, but when we finally did, the seller told us that he discontinued this salesman and he cannot sell at the price offered us. Instead, he offered a much smaller discount.

Isn't he obligated to sell as at the price offered by his own representative?

A. It is certainly very unusual for stores to fail to honor price quotes made by authorized salespeople, especially if the customer invested effort based on the quote, as you did by collecting money from your group. This is not only good ethics, it is good business. No customer wants to start negotiations with a supplier knowing that the supposed "agreement" is really only a starting point for further haggling. Jewish law states that merchants should stand by their word, and anyone who doesn't do so is considered to be unreliable (in Hebrew, mechusar amana).

However, the particular scenario you describe has a number of special features which could justify the supplier from an ethical point of view. The most important one is that you did not make an agreement with the salesman. The salesman offered you a price, and your response was that you would get back to him. It's an ethical problem to renege on an agreement, but the essence of an agreement is that both sides agree, and this aspect is missing in your situation. (1)

It's true that some tenders have special conditions whereby suppliers are obligated to keep their offers open for a specified period of time while the offers are considered, and it is also true that it is generally good business and good ethics to stand by any good-faith offer. But failing to honor an open-ended offer which was never agreed between customer and supplier falls short of being "unreliable".

Another consideration here is that the offer was made by an employee, but the manager claims that the employee exceeded his authority. Jewish law acknowledges that a representative, like your salesman, may not accurately represent the position of the principal (in this case, the seller) and thus his offers would not be binding on the seller. This principle is discussed in the very passage discussing the scope of the prohibition on being an "unreliable" seller. When the sage Rebbe Yochanan asserts that a seller is unreliable even if he reneges on a verbal agreement, the Talmud objects from the following story:

Rebbe Yochanan bet Matia said to his son, go hire some laborers. [The son] went, and stipulated that they would get meals. When he told his father, he replied, "My son, even if you give them a feast like King Solomon's you cannot be sure you have fulfilled your stipulation, for they are the sons of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. [Although they are mere day laborers, they are of elevated descent, and the ambiguous term "meals" could be interpreted to mean sumptuous ones.] Before they begin work, specify that they are entitled only to beans."

The Talmud then asks, if reneging on a verbal agreement makes a person unreliable, how could the distinguished Yochanan ben Matia renege on his agreement to provide meals – an offer that was accepted by the workers? The Talmud's answer is that since Yochanan sent his son as a representative, the workers were aware that the agreement would be subject to the father's agreement. (2) In the case of a salesmen likewise, there is generally some recognition that a special discount could be subject to the approval of someone higher up.

A final consideration is that the seller's reluctance to sell might be due to a rise in price that took place between the original offer and your order. A number of authorities state that a person is not considered unreliable if he reneges on an offer due to a price change that makes the original offer unprofitable. (3)

Price quotes are generally taken seriously by customers, and that alone is a good practical and ethical reason for suppliers to meet them even if there is only an offer and no agreement. On the other hand, your case has some special features: It's not clear that the salesman really had authority to offer you such a large discount, and the price to the seller may have changed in the meantime. The best solution in these cases is to make some kind of compromise, and this is exactly what your seller did by offering you a meaningful though reduced discount on the books you need.

The Jewish Ethicist presents some general principles of Jewish law. For specific questions and direct application, please consult a qualified Rabbi.

The Jewish Ethicist is a joint project of Aish.com and the Business Ethics Center of Jerusalem. To find out more about business ethics and Jewish values for the workplace, visit the Business Ethics Center of Jerusalem at www.besr.org.

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About the Author

Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir is Research Director at the Business Ethics Center of Jerusalem (www.besr.org). He studied at Harvard, received a PhD in Economics from MIT, and rabbinic ordination from the Israeli Chief Rabbinate. Prior to moving to Israel, he worked at the Council of Economic Advisers in the Reagan administration. Rabbi Dr. Meir is also a Senior Lecturer in Economics at the Jerusalem College of Technology and has published several articles on business, economics and Jewish law. He is the author of the two-volume, "Meaning in Mitzvot (Feldheim), and his Aish.com columns form the basis of the "Jewish Ethicist" book (ktav.com).

I've been striving to get more into spirituality. But it seems that every time I make some progress, I find myself slipping right back to where I started. I'm getting discouraged and feel like a failure. Can you help?

The Aish Rabbi Replies:

Spiritual slumps are a natural part of spiritual growth. There is a cycle that people go through when at times they feel closer to God and at times more distant. In the words of the Kabbalists, it is "two steps forward and one step back." So although you feel you are slipping, know that this is a natural process. The main thing is to look at your overall progress (over months or years) and be able to see how far you've come!

This is actually God's ingenious way of motivating us further. The sages compare this to teaching a baby how to walk. When the parent is holding on, the baby shrieks with delight and is under the illusion that he knows how to walk. Yet suddenly, when the parent lets go, the child panics, wobbles and may even fall.

At such times when we feel spiritually "down," that is often because God is letting go, giving us the great gift of independence. In some ways, these are the times when we can actually grow the most. For if we can move ourselves just a little bit forward, we truly acquire a level of sanctity that is ours forever.

Here is a practical tool to help pull you out of the doldrums. The Sefer HaChinuch speaks about a great principle in spiritual growth: "The external awakens the internal." This means that although we may not experience immediate feelings of closeness to God, eventually, by continuing to conduct ourselves in such a manner, this physical behavior will have an impact on our spiritual selves and will help us succeed. (A similar idea is discussed by psychologists who say: "Smile and you will feel happy.")

That is the power of Torah commandments. Even if we may not feel like giving charity or praying at this particular moment, by having a "mitzvah" obligation to do so, we are in a framework to become inspired. At that point we can infuse that act of charity or prayer with all the meaning and lift it can provide. But if we'd wait until being inspired, we might be waiting a very long time.

May the Almighty bless you with the clarity to see your progress, and may you do so with joy.

In 1940, a boatload 1,600 Jewish immigrants fleeing Hitler's ovens was denied entry into the port of Haifa; the British deported them to the island of Mauritius. At the time, the British had acceded to Arab demands and restricted Jewish immigration into Palestine. The urgent plight of European Jewry generated an "illegal" immigration movement, but the British were vigilant in denying entry. Some ships, such as the Struma, sunk and their hundreds of passengers killed.

If you seize too much, you are left with nothing. If you take less, you may retain it (Rosh Hashanah 4b).

Sometimes our appetites are insatiable; more accurately, we act as though they were insatiable. The Midrash states that a person may never be satisfied. "If he has one hundred, he wants two hundred. If he gets two hundred, he wants four hundred" (Koheles Rabbah 1:34). How often have we seen people whose insatiable desire for material wealth resulted in their losing everything, much like the gambler whose constant urge to win results in total loss.

People's bodies are finite, and their actual needs are limited. The endless pursuit for more wealth than they can use is nothing more than an elusive belief that they can live forever (Psalms 49:10).

The one part of us which is indeed infinite is our neshamah (soul), which, being of Divine origin, can crave and achieve infinity and eternity, and such craving is characteristic of spiritual growth.

How strange that we tend to give the body much more than it can possibly handle, and the neshamah so much less than it needs!